Another thread had me wondering. I've seen plenty of references to Dropbox but, what is it???? I'd always considered it as cloud storage, but This Thread tends to indicate otherwise. Is it just a fancy name for a shared folder? Or what?

Never really thought much about the syncing using a lot of data? Think I will remove the auto startup for dropbox and only use it when I need it. Thanks

Need to be careful of what you leave stored in Dropbox, even with it not being active all the time.

because, once you activate the desktop app for Dropbox, it will immediately sync up everything that is being stored in a "shared folder" or the Cloud Storage folder.....
that potentially could be gigabytes of stuff.... especially with pictures.... I snap pix like crazy, needing to "bracket the exposure" and then review it after it is offloaded from the camera.....

if you have a 1,000 pix in any folder, Dropbox/Google will attempt to sync it all up.... right now.

and for me, that causes an Internet Data Outage, as my upload speed is 0.2 Mbps....
and once that is clogged up, nothing happens until I stop the process.

I just read your post and the good replies to it. Here are my thoughts on this as well.

"Dropbox" is a cloud storage provider that offers 2gb of free storage last I checked. They also have Linux options like a Linux sync client. There used to be some issues with their Linux sync client, not sure if those have been fixed. I do not use Dropbox because they only provide 2gb of free storage whereas other cloud providers like "pCloud" offer 10gb of free storage and nice Linux sync client, "Mega.nz" offers 50gb of free encrypted storage and a great Linux client and Google Drive offers 15gb of free storage but does not have a Linux client, but Linux users can access Google Drive in various ways and there are 3rd party sync clients like the wonderful "insync". Linux Mint 19.x and 18.x users can access their Google Drive using their file managers under network if they add their Google Accounts into the System Settings for Online Accounts.

If you have a metered Internet connection (limited usage) or a slow Internet connection instead of the normal unlimited access that most people have, then using a cloud provider could eat up a lot of your allotted bandwidth and usage limitations, but people can choose what to sync with their cloud account and when to sync.

FYI: Cloud storage is secure as long as you have a good password, and can be made more secure if you use encryption. "Mega.nz" already uses encryption, most of the other cloud providers want to charge extra for that, but there are free cloud encryption options like cryptomator, etc... that can work with any cloud provider.

In a nutshell, Dropbox refers both to the online storage provider and to their program you can install on your computer. The latter is what synchronizes files in specific directories on your computer with files stored in your account on their online storage. That way you can have a directory of files on multiple computers and devices, where a change in one is automatically copied to all others and you have it also backed up online.

To expand on this: what a lot of people do not realize is how convenient and useful using a cloud provider can be.

- Besides the obvious fact that anything you add or sync to your cloud account is considered a backup.

- Most cloud providers have sync clients available for all computers using any operating system like MS Windows, Mac, or Linux, and for most devices like smartphones, tablets, etc... and they can automatically sync to any of them either all the time or whenever you choose. So, if you are taking pictures or videos on your smartphone or tablet, downloaded a song, etc... anything on your computers as well, you can have that automatically synced to any other computer using any operating system or smartphone or tablet and within a minute or two (or less) those will be available on all of your synced computers and devices.

--- So if you lost, or had stolen, or damaged, your smartphone or tablet, or computer, you will still have everything you synced or uploaded to your cloud account available (documents, data, music, pictures, videos, etc...). Of course, super large files that are gigabytes in size will take a long time to upload or transfer to a cloud account.

- These cloud storage accounts are for your personal and or business files and they are not automatically available to others. But, they can be shared in various ways if you want that. For instance, I will sometimes upload a file to one of my cloud accounts and get a "shared link" URL address to that file for sharing with others in this forum or an email or website, etc...; in some cases, you can setup a shared area for a specific person or group of people.

Hope this helps ...

Last edited by phd21 on Sat Nov 10, 2018 10:57 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Dropbox is a cloud storage for files that you want to share with a person or a group online, do not use it for personal files storage, just for files that are not private and you want to share with someone else, hope this helps answering your questions!

Right, you can also share specific files or directories with others through Dropbox.

As with any cloud storage, one should weigh what information to entrust to such a third party and whether that information should be stored online. https://syncthing.net/ is probably a better alternative for people that have concerns. It does the same as Dropbox (synchronize your files between your computers and devices) but nothing is stored online, everything is only stored locally on your computers and devices.